Author
Topic: Quotes...got any? (Read 44927 times)

A man is a fool not to put everything he has, at any given moment, into what he is creating. You're there now doing the thing on paper. You're not killing the goose, you're just producing an egg. So I don't worry about inspiration, or anything like that. It's a matter of just sitting down and working. I have never had the problem of a writing block. I've heard about it. I've felt reluctant to write on some days, for whole weeks, or sometimes even longer. I'd much rather go fishing, for example, or go sharpen pencils, or go swimming, or what not. But, later, coming back and reading what I have produced, I am unable to detect the difference between what came easily and when I had to sit down and say, "Well, now it's writing time and now I'll write." There's no difference on paper between the two.

Ah, how I have come to love that sense of accomplishment and victory that I get when I pull the wool over the eyes of a clever player character. What DM Triumphs have you had?

Some of mine:1. Finally killing an incredibly powerful, lucky, annoying player's character.2. Finally achieving a TPK (Total Party Kill)3. Finally achieving a TPK using only traps4. Finally working out how to make it so that d**n wizard doesn't steal the spotlight all the d**n time.

They ate her," said Brother Number One. "With porridge. That's what 'ran away and was never seen again' means in these parts. It means 'eaten.'"

Um and what about 'happily ever after'?" asked David, a little uncertainly. "What does that mean?"

"Eaten quickly," said Brother Number One."

2. "He had quite liked the dwarves. He often had no idea what they were talking about, but for a group of homicidal, class-obsessed small people, they were really rather good fun."

3. "On more than one occasion David, in his urge to explore the darker corners of the bookshelves, had found himself wearing strands of spider silk in his face and hair, causing the web's creator to scuttle into a corner and crouch balefully, lost in thoughts of arachnoid revenge."

Ah, how I have come to love that sense of accomplishment and victory that I get when I pull the wool over the eyes of a clever player character. What DM Triumphs have you had?

Some of mine:1. Finally killing an incredibly powerful, lucky, annoying player's character.2. Finally achieving a TPK (Total Party Kill)3. Finally achieving a TPK using only traps4. Finally working out how to make it so that d**n wizard doesn't steal the spotlight all the d**n time.

“To gain your own voice, you have to forget about having it heard.”—Allen Ginsberg,

“Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.”—George Orwell

“It ain’t whatcha write, it’s the way atcha write it.”—Jack Kerouac

“I don’t care if a reader hates one of my stories, just as long as he finishes the book.”—Roald Dahl

“We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.”—Ernest Hemingway

“Every secret of a writer’s soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind, is written large in his works.”—Virginia Woolf

“Each writer is born with a repertory company in his head. Shakespeare has perhaps 20 players. … I have 10 or so, and that’s a lot. As you get older, you become more skillful at casting them.”—Gore Vidal

“We’re past the age of heroes and hero kings. … Most of our lives are basically mundane and dull, and it’s up to the writer to find ways to make them interesting.”—John Updike

“Know your literary tradition, savor it, steal from it, but when you sit down to write, forget about worshiping greatness and fetishizing masterpieces.”—Allegra Goodman

“There are no laws for the novel. There never have been, nor can there ever be.”—Doris Lessing

“Style means the right word. The rest matters little.”—Jules Renard

“I do not over-intellectualize the production process. I try to keep it simple: Tell the d**ned story.”—Tom Clancy

“One thing that helps is to give myself permission to write badly. I tell myself that I’m going to do my five or 10 pages no matter what, and that I can always tear them up the following morning if I want. I’ll have lost nothing—writing and tearing up five pages would leave me no further behind than if I took the day off.”—Lawrence Block

“I think the deeper you go into questions, the deeper or more interesting the questions get. And I think that’s the job of art.”—Andre Dubus

“People say, ‘What advice do you have for people who want to be writers?’ I say, they don’t really need advice, they know they want to be writers, and they’re gonna do it. Those people who know that they really want to do this and are cut out for it, they know it.”—R.L. Stine

“Remember: Plot is no more than footprints left in the snow after your characters have run by on their way to incredible destinations.”—Ray Bradbury

“There is only one plot—things are not what they seem.”—Jim Thompson

“Anyone who is going to be a writer knows enough at 15 to write several novels.”—May Sarton

“I think all writing is a disease. You can’t stop it.”—William Carlos Williams

“The most beautiful things are those that madness prompts and reason writes.”—Andre Gide

“Literature is strewn with the wreckage of men who have minded beyond reason the opinions of others.”—Virginia Woolf

“Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now.”—Annie Dillard

“When we want mood experiences, we go to concerts or museums. When we want meaningful emotional experience, we go to the storyteller.”

“Write every day, line by line, page by page, hour by hour. Do this despite fear. For above all else, beyond imagination and skill, what the world asks of you is courage, courage to risk rejection, ridicule and failure. As you follow the quest for stories told with meaning and beauty, study thoughtfully but write boldly. Then, like the hero of the fable, your dance will dazzle the world.”

“Good story' means something worth telling that the world wants to hear. Finding this is your lonely task...But the love of a good story, of terrific characters and a world driven by your passion, courage, and creative gifts is still not enough. Your goal must be a good story well told.”

“True character is revealed in the choices a human being makes under pressure - the greater the pressure, the deeper the revelation, the truer the choice to the character's essential nature.”

“Stories are the creative conversion of life itself into a more powerful, clearer, more meaningful experience. They are the currency of human contact.”

“In a world of lies and liars, an honest work of art is always an act of social responsibility.”

“In comedy laughter settles all arguments.”

“The Law of Diminishing Returns is true of everything in life, except sex, which seems endlessly repeatable with effect.”

“Boredom is the inner conflict we suffer when we lose desire, when we lack a lacking.”

“Story is metaphor for life and life is lived in time.”

If the story you're telling, is the story you're telling, you're in deep s**t.”

“We rarely know where we are going; writing is a discovery.”

“Most of life's actions are within our reach, but decisions take willpower.”

“What happens is fact, not truth. Truth is what we think about what happens.”

“In life two negatives don't make a positive. Double negatives turn positive only in math and formal logic. In life things just get worse and worse and worse.”

“Secure writers don't sell first drafts. They patiently rewrite until the script is as director-ready, as actor-ready as possible. Unfinished work invites tampering, while polished, mature work seals its integrity.”

“Deus ex machina not only erases all meaning and emotion, it's an insult to the audience. Each of us knows we must choose and act, for better or worse, to determine the meaning of our lives...Deus ex machina is an insult because it is a lie.”

“No matter our talent, we all know in the midnight of our souls that 90 percent of what we do is less than our best.”